Big Sur >> With Highway 1 completely open for the first time in 17 months after Caltrans opened the scenic coastal road through Mud Creek following a massive landslide last year, business began to pick up over the weekend.

Kirk Gafill, president of the Big Sur Chamber of Commerce, said business was fantastic at his restaurant, Nepenthe over the weekend.

While Gafill said it was like a switch was flipped back on for Nepenthe over the weekend, he said it will likely take longer for hotels and campgrounds to catch up.

“I suspect there’s going to be more of a lag time for the reservation systems to catch up with people who now realize that they can come up in a more convenient manner from Southern California.

Rick Aldinger, treasurer of the Big Sur Chamber of Commerce and general manager of the Big Sur River Inn, said only time will tell if business levels will return to normal for the remainder of the season.

“Weekends have been pretty good the last four to six weeks, so for me the proof will be in what happens midweek,” Aldinger said. “I know Wednesday and Thursday last week were a couple of the slowest days we’ve had in a little while, ironically.”

Highway 1 reopened Wednesday, 14 months after the largest landslide ever on the Big Sur Coast dumped more than 6 million cubic yards over Highway 1. A new roadway was built on top of a massive landslide that covered Highway 1 with 35 to 40 feet of dirt and rocks.

Aldinger said he doesn’t expect a huge difference in business right away.

“I would expect to see a little bit of a bump here right around the opening,” he said. “Overall, I think it’s going to be kind of a gradual growth of traffic and business again over the next few months until we get back to what feels like normal for us.”

Last month, Caltrans moved the date it expected Highway 1 to reopen from in the middle of September to late July.

“Based on that, I would imagine that a lot of people made their alternate plans for the summer, realizing the highway wasn’t going to be open,” Aldinger said. “It opened on somewhat short notice, which I’m not complaining about at all, but it’s my guess a lot of people made their alternate plans.”

Gafill and Aldinger said they are hopeful the gradual increase will pick up by September, when Caltrans previously estimated Highway 1 would reopen, as people who made reservations previously come into the area.

“If we were talking about a normal summer, most of the hotels, motels and campgrounds would have been booked months ago through to Labor Day,” Gafill said.

The Big Sur area received monumental amounts of rain in the winter of 2016-2017. Parts of the Santa Lucia Range above Big Sur received upwards of 28 inches of rain in a week in January 2017. Big Sur received 1,150 percent of its normal rain that February. A landslide led to the failure of the Pfeiffer Canyon Bridge in February 2017. A new bridge opened October 2017.

With the likelihood of El Niño conditions increasing for next winter, Aldinger said he’s hoping any potential storms don’t hit the area hard enough to cause any future closures of Highway 1 or Big Sur businesses.